


chiaroscuro

by cellorocket



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: Body Horror, Depression, Gen, Gore, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, garbage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 07:44:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5197892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cellorocket/pseuds/cellorocket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>he was never the artist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	chiaroscuro

 

He won’t remember this.

There is a long, ringing silence. The air reeks of scorched cement and gore, the ground streaked with prosthetic parts. A scrap is digging into the soft part of his knee, though he can’t feel it. He lies with his ear pressed against a chest that should rise and fall, where within a stubborn heart should beat on, but it is still and silent.

“Dad,” he whispers, hoarse from screaming. “Dad.”

His father says nothing. His eyes are blank, fixed to someplace Ginoza can't see. And the silence continues on; keening, wailing silence, reverberating in his own sundered chest. Silence the size of mountains.

It’s nonsensical. Something in him has broken, a reserve behind which he kept every swallowed stab of hurt and resentment, every plea, every withheld call in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep and needed guidance or an experienced, usually sympathetic ear. He’d sealed it away, and now what? His father is growing cold under his cheek.

He is alone for a long time. Neither Kougami nor Tsunemori return, and in his state this makes about as much sense as anything else. Cause and effect no longer exist in this place; only the moment, only result. His father is gone – obviously, viscerally dead. Half his side is a bloody mess, an open socket, open veins pouring. Ginoza can’t even comfort himself with the thought that he might only be asleep.  

His wrist pings insistently, and the greenish-blue of the hologram casts an odd shadow over his father’s still features. He tries to push himself upright, but dizziness assails him. He can’t move. He can’t move beyond this. He can only remain curled against his father’s side in a growing pool of blood, his left arm hanging grotesquely from its socket, bracing against the silence.

 _Dad,_ he begs. _Dad._ It is somehow familiar, though he hasn’t spoken the word in years. There are so many saved up beneath his tongue.

He won’t remember the sound of loafers scuffing against the pavement. Hitched breath by his ear, a hand on his good shoulder, gentle enough to hurt. He won’t remember looking up, trying to see past the darkness encroaching at the edge of his vision, won’t remember watching Tsunemori kneel at his side. God, if he's lucky, he won’t remember any of this.

But he does remember her eyes. He watches her mouth moving soundlessly as she reaches for him, her fingers streaked with grime and blood. Watches her hands as she converts her jacket into a tourniquet sling, staunching the blood and easing his ruined arm inside with tenderness he doesn’t deserve. He watches her eyes, and they are red raw, swollen from crying.

~

_Sometimes, his father is out late. It happens often when they are eating dinner, or right before his bedtime story: the communicator will chime and his father will answer, the greenish-blue of the hologram making his features appear ghostly and insubstantial, as if he is not quite part of this world. Then he kisses his mother goodbye, slips into his tan trenchcoat, and leaves. Nobuchika knows not to expect him home until the morning, when he will inevitably find him sleeping in his favorite chair, head tipped back and mouth agape, snoring softly._

_But tonight, Nobuchika decides he won’t wait until the morning to greet Papa. It is vitally important, in the manner of most childish crusades, for him to be waiting. It’s important that his father not spend the night alone._

_He submits to bedtime routine without betraying his plan; yawns and bundles deep in the covers and accepts a kiss on the forehead from his mother. He probably sells it a little too hard, because her smile is knowing and fond. He waits, listening for her footsteps as she brushes her teeth and washes her face. Waits, listening to the muffled drone of a newscast. He slips out of bed and listens with his ear pressed to the crack in the door, until he’s certain his mother is sleeping before slipping into the hallway and padding to the living room, his nerves thrilling._

_The chair isn’t anything special; not particularly well-made or comfortable. It smells faintly of alcohol and his father’s aftershave, and there’s a dark stain on the left arm in the shape of a bird in flight. Yet it’s his father’s favorite, so Nobuchika decides that there must be something special about it. He pulls himself up and settles in the crook, hugging his knees to his chest, and the old cushion sinks under his weight._

_At first, he can hardly sit still. Time slows cruelly, caught by details; the shadows shifting on the far wall, carhorns bleating in the street below, voices that rise and fade as the night wears on. Police sirens echo in the darkness. One, two, three … he counts as high as he can and then backwards, kicking out his legs. He’s too small to reach the ground normally; he has to wiggle to the very edge for his tip toes to touch._

_But soon the sounds blur; the shadows sharpen like crooked fingers. The apartment is cold and empty, and the world outside is incomprehensibly large; a vast network of alleys and streets, filled with more people than Nobuchika will ever meet. Stirrings of anxiety coil around his heart as he thinks of his father out in the dark, hunted and alone. His earlier delight has all but faded; now he is filled with increasing, elemental dread._

_He doesn’t remember falling asleep. The next thing he knows, his father is craning over him, tired eyes wide. “What are you doing out of bed?” he asks. “Did you have another nightmare?”_

_Nobuchika shakes his head. “I’m too old for nightmares.”_

_“Eh? Is four too old for nightmares, now?”_

_A resolute nod._

_“So?”_

_Confronted with his father’s confusion, his idea suddenly doesn’t seem like such a good one. Maybe he liked being by himself when he got home from whatever it was that he did. A hot swell of shame coils in Nobuchika’s stomach, and he tucks his chin down; yet even so, it doesn’t occur to him to lie. “I didn’t want you to be alone.”_

_His father doesn’t say anything for a long while. He looks startled and sad and lost, and Nobuchika is convinced he’s said the wrong thing when a pair of strong arms heft him up and hold him close. “Now I’m not,” his father says, and he knows it’s alright. He’d done alright._

_“Do I have to go back to bed?”_

_His father makes a show of it, to Nobuchika’s delight, craning this way and that before shooting him a mischievous grin. “Not if you’re quiet.”_

_With a long sigh, he plops into his chair and they settle together. Nobuchika curls up against his father, who presses a kiss to the top of his head, smoothing his hair flat. The sounds of life outside are quieter now, more distant; even another round of sirens can’t touch them in this safe place. Nobuchika settles his ear against his father’s chest and listens to the steady promise of his heartbeat; each pulse is reassuring in a way that’s too big for words._

_When his mother comes down that morning, she finds the pair of them still sleeping: father with his head tipped back, son clutching the front of his shirt, tucked under his arm. They’re both snoring softly, the slackened breath of dreamers._

_~_

Ginoza woke in a white room. Thoughts were slow and awkward in his tender skull, as if pushing behind a fog. The result of sedative? He couldn’t remember. For a few moments, his only impulses were physical and primitive; the reflex to narrow his eyes against the intense whiteness of his surroundings, to roll his aching shoulder, to scratch an itch in the center of his left palm.

But the ache was wrong, raw and ragged, like a serrated blade had been taken to the bone; a thrumming, stomach-churning throb. The itch slowly grew unbearable, and he attempted to push himself upright, but only his right arm obeyed the reflex command.

His left was gone.

A sick chill chased down his back. He clenched his eyes shut so hard whirling shapes danced behind his eyelids, but when he opened them again the picture did not change. Only a slight lump where the wad of neat bandages rustled beneath the empty sleeve of his shirt indicated the loss. He could feel tape pulling at his raw skin as he shifted, stitches and staples, a rotted hole where once was a strong, functioning limb. The itch, the maddening itch, boring into the bone, but there was nothing there; nothing to scratch.

He ripped at his shirt, unbalanced and desperate. His sole hand trembled so he could hardly work the neck aside well enough to see. He didn’t know what he was expecting. For it to be a hallucination, maybe. A trick of the light. But the longer he stared, the blunter his surroundings became until there could be no argument, no insistence otherwise. Fresh bandages marked the place where his arm had once been, stark against his pale skin. The lights buzzed above his head. Someone down the hall was screaming. He had no left palm to scratch.

In that moment of stunned realization, he remembered the explosion that had trapped him, the lit fuse illuminating his father’s panic and Makishima’s delight, remembered accepting his fate only to have it exchanged at the last moment. His father on the cold cement in a pool of blood. His hand on Ginoza’s cheek.

His stomach heaved. This was only a dream, it hadn’t really happened – he would wake up any moment now and the world would be the same as always; his father only a phone call away, instead of beyond Ginoza’s ability to reach. He would reach out this time. He’d let go of years of bitterness and jealousy and hurt, set them aside as if they’d never existed in the first place. He’d never say another hard word. He hadn’t even meant them.

Flinging aside the thin hospital blankets, he staggered to his feet and lurched toward the door, an IV cart jerking behind with each faltering step he took. He barely noticed the pale, plastic tube sticking out of his only arm, or the blood dripping onto his bare feet as it pulled taut; only his wheeling heartbeat registered, struggling against his ribs. The sound of his ragged gasping was deafening in the sterile room.

_< HR: 164bpm_

_Hue: Deep Siena_

_Crime Coefficient: 211_

_Please return to your bed and wait quietly for mental care > _

“Let me out,” he wheezed as the medical drones flanked him. “Let me out of here.”

~

_His mother picks him up from school and brings him to the hospital in the afternoon, clutching his hand in a clammy grip. It’s summer, and slow; the heat lies thick over the city like a shroud. Though it’s only been three days since the accident, Nobuchika feels like three years have passed instead, each hour growing longer than the last. All of the adults tell him that Papa is alive and that he’ll be fine, but their assurances give Nobuchika a bad feeling. He will be fine, because he isn’t fine now. _

_The hospital is strangely quiet. Doctors and nurses shuffle past on soft feet; not even their shoes squeak on the spotless linoleum floor. They speak in whispers. Down the hall someone is crying, and Nobuchika huddles closer to his mother, familiar anxiety making a home in the pit of his stomach. This is a place for sick people, dying people. This is not a place for his father._

_“What happened to Papa?” he ventures as they ride the elevator up to the 11 th floor. _

_His mother is quiet, and her cheek bugles as she chews on the edge of her tongue, a familiar gesture. “He got hurt,” she says at last, in a voice as brittle as old bones. “They had to take his arm away.”_

_Anxiety coalesces into dread, and he clutches his mother’s hand so tightly that she winces. “His whole arm?” he whispers in a trembling voice._

_She seems to come back to herself a little then, for she looks down at him and offers what might have been an encouraging smile, in any other circumstances, if not for the tightness of her eyes. “They’re going to give him a new one.”_

_But the prospect only increases Nobuchika’s fear; he knows nothing about the miracle of prosthetics; he only knows that his father has been badly wounded, and that from this moment on his life will be irrevocably changed. He’s lost a part of himself. Simply attaching a replacement piece won’t automatically fix anything._

_His mother’s pace quickens when they reach the 11 th floor, but Nobuchika finds himself dragging his heels, making each step slow and ponderous, to buy himself a few moments before he has to confront the source of his terror. His mind fills with a thousand horrible images – bloodstained bandages slipping down from a ruined shoulder, a gaping hole peeking through the empty sleeve of a hospital gown, his father’s features contorted into something unrecognizable from pain. He can’t bear any of it. _

_When they reach Papa’s room, a doctor pulls his mother aside to speak to her in a low, urgent voice. Nobuchika suddenly doesn’t care, doesn’t even really notice – he stands on tiptoe and peers through the window, straining to see past the gap under the nurse’s arm. He forgets that he is nervous and scared and the whole situation is making his stomach hurt; he sees his father and moves without consciously deciding to._

_“Nobuchika,” Papa breathes around a weak smile. “How’s it looking?”_

_It looks awful. It looks like it **hurts**. He shakes his head, lip trembling too badly to control now._

_“How ‘bout you come over here a minute.”_

_He obeys with a little sniff before shuffling across the room. Hesitating briefly before giving into the impulse, he reaches out to clutch his father’s sleeve._ I’m sorry _, he thinks desperately, watching his father’s expression contort in pain._ I’m sorry I can’t help.

_~_

His first days as a resident of the Adachi Municipal Psycho-Pass Correction and Medical Care Center were characterized by desperate, unconscious rebellion. He demanded unreasonable things from the requisition service, constant updates on the state of his apartment and dog. He insisted personnel see directly to the care of his plants, and an actual person go to his apartment and give Dime attention. One couldn’t expect a happily socialized dog with just the walking drone, after all. It wasn’t a mystery why he sought this distraction; he had nothing else here. Nothing but bland walls, and the holographic door displaying his vitals.

_< HR: 90bpm_

_Hue: Deep Indigo_

_Crime Coefficient: 186_

_Please center your thoughts on the positive! > _

As though such a thing were possible. Even when he waited quietly, with his one hand palm-side up in his lap, a storm raged in him – a bitter, unwieldly construct stitched from pain and regret, need and loss. A ragged howl building in the quiet.

 “My dog,” he whispered on the third day, struggling to keep his balance despite the missing limb. Tantrums had given way to quiet begging. “Who is taking care of my dog?”

The medical drone looked on impassively. _“Your partner has taken temporary custody.”_

 _My partner_ … but that couldn’t have been true. His partner was long gone.

 

~

_Nobuchika had not been allowed to witness the surgery, but it’s all he talks about for weeks, especially when helping Papa change his bandages, gently dabbing the scarred tissue with treatment before wrapping the wound. He’s big enough to do it, now; big enough to help._

_It’s a good thing, too, because recovery is slow, gruesome work. Papa bears it with gritted teeth, just as he had during the procedure; forcing himself to be still when they welded the socket plate into the hole, and then finally, attached the prosthetic. And now, though it might have been more natural to writhe in pain, he does not. The healing scar is so sensitive that even a whisper of breath registers as acute agony, but he does not move except to smile every now and then, fleeting as a wisp of cloud over the sun._

_“What’s it like?” Nobuchika asks one afternoon, after spending three plucking up the courage to ask._

_At first, his father says nothing. The metallic hand clenches, and his fingers audibly scrape against the palm, making the hair on the back of Nobuchika’s neck stand up. For a moment, he has a thrill of premonition – though his father has no reason to lie, he still hesitates over the truth, as if he found it uncomfortable. “It’s not so bad,” he says finally, so distant from the question that it almost fails to answer it._

_He reaches out to Nobuchika with the prosthetic, and though he’s anticipating it he still jumps when the freezing metal brushes his shoulder. Not a jump, a flinch – and his father had seen. Slowly, the smile melts away._

_“It’s not bad,” he says again, as if reminding himself._

~

Time bled together. Before, he’d marked every hour and passing minute, notching it neatly into his memory. But now the days bent and twisted; entire stretches of time disappeared in one slow blink, ephemeral, too insubstantial to hold. One moment he would be sitting in his bed, and the next staring into the reflecting faceplate of a medical drone, reconciling its smooth impersonal presence to its lack of gestures and curiously inflected tone.

He couldn’t remember the last time he spoke to a person. He couldn’t remember anything. He wouldn’t.

Each day was exactly the same. At exactly 0600 in the morning the lights would fade on, and the same canned voice-over would play exactly ten times. (“Good morning! Today is going to be a wonderful day! Work hard on purifying your Hue!” And on and on). At 0630 a drone would slide his breakfast through the door, and he would poke at it distantly before flushing it down the toilet. He made an effort, at first. He tried. But the food sat heavy on his tongue, twisted in his stomach.  It was just as well, he thought as he watched breakfast circle the drain. He was tired.

In the mornings, he submitted to therapy. He filtered out comments from the drones and staff (‘catatonic’ ‘disassociating’ ‘malnourished’). In the afternoons, his bandages were changed and the wound cleaned, checked for infection. His bangs and scrapes treated, all with the same brusque, disengaged attention. He was not a person in this place. He was a construct, a golem from one of his father’s old books, mindlessly wandering without purpose or direction.

At night, he could hear the resident in the cell next to his weeping, their sobs muffled by hands or blankets or the paper-thin pillow. (He remembered this from the days before; they were thin because sometimes residents would try to smother themselves). A weak surge of temper for the suffering stranger curdled in his stomach; it was as if they boasted their ability to feel, to process misery through tears. He felt nothing; a great, screaming absence built in the center of his chest, a singularity from which nothing could escape.

 

~

_On the seventh night of his return, he finds his father in the kitchen at 3am, making eggs instead of sleeping or prowling the shadow-slick streets. He rolls his new shoulder and winces before catching sight of Nobuchika in the doorway, watching with wide eyes. Abruptly, the smile is back – the reassuring grin that doesn’t seem to reassure that much anymore._

_“Sorry, Nobuchika,” he says with a light laugh, a little shrug of his good shoulder. “Was I making too much noise?”_

_He shakes his head. “Dad ...?”_

_“Hm?”_

_“Where do you go at night?”_

_“What?”_

_“At night, you leave sometimes. Mom always looks worried. And you come back later smelling weird.”_

_He can’t be sure, but his father’s expression contains a multitude – mostly dismayed, but for a moment he almost looks a little proud, too. Proud that Nobuchika caught on. “Yeah? What’s weird smell like?”_

_He thinks back, remembers the pistol. “Like guns, and rain.”_

_After a long silence, his father sighs and runs his real hand through his hair, which makes it stand on end. The fake arm hangs limply at his side. “Now, you gotta square up with me first. Not a word of this to your mother, got it?”_

_A quick, fervent shake of head. He’ll take every breath to his grave._

_“Not that I think she’ll disapprove, exactly, but … well, it’s not stuff for kids.”_

_He couldn’t have possibly made his occupation sound more interesting if he’d tried; Nobuchika has to keep himself from wiggling in place, giving himself away as just another kid, another grimy tag along, too immature for the truth. He straightens and comports himself as he thinks adults do; with a cool expression, conspiratorial, assured of his experience. “I won’t say anything.”_

_They retreat to the living room, and his father hauls him up on his lap. He’s getting almost too big for this, now, but you couldn’t tell his father that. They’re both quiet for a long time, listening to cars speed down the rain-slicked street, tempered by indistinct voices down the hall. He seems to be weighing the truth, parsing it into an appropriate form, before he gives up and comes right out with it. “I’m a detective.”_

_Nobuchika knows the word, but not really what it means. “Like those guys in the books?”_

_“With the funny hats?” His father laughs. “Guess I’m not a detective after all, since I don’t have one.”_

_“You can be a detective without a funny hat,” Nobuchika says, trying to sound wise and experienced, so his father will tell him everything. But it only makes his father laugh again, first at his comment, then at his dismay._

_“Good,” he says at last. “’Cause I wouldn’t be much use at anything else.”_

_“That’s not true. You make good breakfasts. Better than the hologram.”_

_“I sure better. The day a program cooks better than a person I’ll eat my shoes. ”_

_Despite himself, Nobuchika giggles. “Gross.”_

_His father pinches his side, grinning. “So, you’re right. It’s kinda like those guys in the books. See, there’s people that do bad things, like hurt or kill other people, and they try to cover it up so no one will ever find out. And it’s my job to figure out what really happened, so I can find ‘em and put ‘em away. They make it hard; some criminals are damn smart. They think of almost everything.”_

_“But you catch them?”_

_“But I catch them, whenever I can. You lay things out – lay out the facts, what you know, what you see with your own eyes. Then you use those facts to make predictions – you’ll feel it in your gut, if you got it. Detective’s instinct. That’s how you catch them; you gotta see the facts, and lay them out so it gets your gut pinging. You catch them, so they can’t hurt anyone ever again.”_

_“… because it’s right?”_

_“Exactly. It’s good, making sure people are safe enough to go outside, live their lives. Solving cases and keeping bad people from doing it again. It’s the best thing.”_

_Nobuchika stares. It’s more than that; it is the noblest, most selfless occupation he can imagine. While other fathers spend their evenings at home, Papa shrugs into his old tan overcoat and prowls the streets for criminals, ferreting out clues, outsmarting evil-doers before they can hurt someone else. Understanding descends; not only does his father do this for the sake of others, but he puts himself in clear danger in the process._

_“Is that how you lost your arm?” he asks, biting his lip._

_His father is quiet for a long while. “Something like that.” After a moment, he cranes around to study Nobuchika’s features before giving him another little pinch. “Aw, c’mon. You’re just like your mother, worrying yourself grey. And you’re not even seven.”_

_“I’m not grey,” Nobuchika protests; he doesn’t want to be like his mother, he wants to be like Papa – brave and smart, selflessly dedicating himself to the pursuit of justice. “I was just thinking.”_

_“Yeah?”_

_He fiddles with a loose thread on his sleeve, chewing on his lower lip. The words are unruly in him, the sentiment barely contained, but he knows it would be unfair to keep silent after his father was so frank with him. “I want to be a detective too,” he whispers, head bowed, and he is not imagining his father’s embrace grow tighter, or the little catch of breath against the back of his head. He leaves the rest unspoken:_ I want to be like you.

~

One day after the medical drones finished bandaging the hole where his arm used to be, a nurse came to see him. Every stitch of her uniform was perfectly pressed, all the way down to spotless shoes, so perfect that it looked as if she’d been sewn into it, but the picture faded when his gaze drifted to her face. Her eyes were wide, and her smile seemed pasted on, affected as a mask. “You have a visitor,” she told him in a voice that matched her smile. “Isn’t that nice?”

Ginoza said nothing. Words seemed to travel a great distance in him before they reached his tongue, and by the time they did the impulse to speak was gone.  He stood laboriously and tugged at his IV cart, and made to follow.

Before, he might have studied his surroundings as he passed down the halls, peered through windows at the other inmates, studied their Hues and Crime Coefficient. He would have cared, too much for his concern to be purely professional. Had he been in his right mind, a citizen of the world before, this place and its occupants would have deeply upset him. He would have worried madly over who could have come to see him today _(probably one of his former colleagues, since his grandmother was in no condition to travel, and his father …)_

Now, it was all he can do to keep pace with the nurse. Gone were the days when he could pursue a criminal on foot for twenty blocks. His legs hurt. His chest hurt. His phantom left arm ached and itched and spasmed, until all he could do in the face of that maddening pain was retreat more deeply into himself. There was nothing in this dark corner of his mind; not pain, not loss, not even regret. He didn’t have to think about anything here.

Instead, he watched the nurse’s neat bun bob a little with each step she took. Her hair was a pretty shade of brown.

“She’s just through there,” the nurse said, swallowing. “Since your Psycho-Pass is so vulnerable, please keep your conversation pleasant.”

There wasn’t likely to be any conversation at all, a fact that seemed to register only after the silence grew too long. With a sigh, the nurse hit the door switch and allowed him to pass.

It took him a moment to recognize the woman waiting on the other side of the glass. She was drawn, bruised and battered, a fresh bandage marking her forehead and cheek. It was only when he met her eyes that he recognized Tsunemori, though he had never seen them so darkly circled, haloed by healing bruises. Her mouth parted and eyes widened as she took him in, and her scrutiny was too much to bear. He lowered himself gently into the opposite seat, and did not meet her gaze.

“Ginoza-san,” she whispered when he picked up the receiver.

He said nothing. His throat was tight. If he tried to speak now, only a pitiful croak would come out.

“I … would have come sooner. They told me your condition was too serious for visitors.”

This was probably true; he didn’t remember. He made a small sound that might have been a grunt of assent, in some other place; here it sounded raspy and weak.

They were quiet for a long time. She studied him and he studied her, because it was strange to talk to someone he knew from before, someone who knew _him_ from before. He might have been ashamed of the picture he struck if he had the capacity for it; now, he merely watched her hungrily, because she was different – a splash of bruise and color against the monotonous white of his surroundings, the monotonous affectations. A beating heart amid mannequins.

“I’ve been taking care of Dime,” she told him, trying to smile. “He’s such a sweetheart. You never said as much because you’re so private, Ginoza-san, but I had a feeling. I think you must spoil him because he did something really funny this morning, I swore I had to tell you about it. I was eating breakfast and Dime was sitting right next to me, with his head on my knee, looking up at me with the saddest, most pathetic expression I’ve ever seen on a dog. Do you often give him breakfast from your plate? He seemed to expect it. I should have taken a photo … well, anyway, Candy – ah, my hologram assistant – they don’t really get along. She started trying to shoo Dime away, and Dime just wandered around to my other knee and put his head there. Licked my wrist and everything, like he was trying to butter me up. Does that work on you? I swear, he drives her crazy – I – I mean, drives her up a wall. It’s really something.”

He got the feeling that it was important for him to smile as well, though the story itself brought him no pleasure, so he did his best.

“I took your plants too, though I’m not very good at caring for them. I know nothing about gardening; I had to do a lot of research. Well, after – ah … after everything, I have some free time, so I’ve been able to. It’s not so bad! Candy tried to do it herself but you told me plants grow best under a human touch. So I’ve been trying to keep at it. Of course I’ll replace whatever I ruin! You don’t have to worry about that. I know it’s not the same, but … well, like I said. I’ll do my best.” 

Had he said that? He didn’t remember. Swallowing hard, he closed his eyes and forced himself to speak. _“…thank you.”_ It occurred to him after a moment that these were the first words he’d spoken to another person since he’d been admitted, however long ago that was. A few days, a few years; either could have been true.

“You don’t have to thank me,” she said firmly, though her voice had gone a little hoarse. “We’re partners, remember?”

This time he cleared his throat, and the words came out a little stronger: “You’re right.”

How could he have forgotten? He understood her situation more acutely than anyone else could have; only this time, he was the partner that left. But to accept this would be to accept everything else; his loss, his failures, the weight of regret that threatened to consume him. His empty sleeve draped awkwardly in his lap, a halved gesture.

“They told me you aren’t eating,” she said quietly. “Why?”

The full weight of everything pressed on him; the life he would never know again, the career that had been stripped from him due to his weakness, Kougami gone for good, and his father – worst of all, worst of everything. Seeing the flash of dynamite, knowing he was going to die, and then at the last moment, having that fate exchanged by his father. The truth bubbled out of him before he could stop it, as if it had been waiting for its chance. He hunched onto himself and dropped her gaze. “It would be better if I was dead.”

He regretted it as soon as the words left his mouth; her breath caught wetly, almost too quiet for him to hear, but he couldn’t possibly miss her over-bright eyes, or the way she chewed savagely on her lower lip. Though it confused him, that familiar guilt coiled around his throat, clenching like a fist. It didn’t matter that it was true. It never mattered.

She comported herself after a moment, taking a long breath and exhaling slowly, a practiced, measure gesture he’d seen on the job, when circumstances began to overwhelm. When she opened her eyes again, her gaze was hard as steel, yet there was tenderness there as well, deep empathy that cut straight to his muffled heart. “It would be better, Ginoza-san, if you lived.”

When he said nothing, she leaned close and pressed her left hand to the glass. “Please.”

~

_He comes home from school one afternoon to find his father hunched in front of a blank canvas, pulling on his chin. He looks up when the door latches shut, and a smile instantly overtakes his features, makes him look ten years younger than he really is. “C’mere, Nobuchika,” he says. “You’re just on time.”_

_“On time for what?”_

_“Just sit there.”_

_So he’s to play model once again. At this point in Nobuchika’s life, these excursions are so common as to be boring; he heaves a little sigh and plops down where his father indicated. “I need to do homework.”_

_“That’s fine. That’s perfect. Do your homework and pretend I’m not here.”_

_Also impossible, as his father likes to talk while he works. But Nobuchika complies, balancing his textbook across his knees and letting his anxious posture settle. There’s something about being painted that makes him nervous. Something about how final it is, how permanent, and no matter how sunny the day or bright the subject, his father likes to capture them veiled in unnecessary shadow, as if he sees the world only in shades of darkness, blacks and greys._

_But he watches his father arrange the oils, a spread of color as vivid as autumn, saturated reds and oranges, deep greens and blues, and he starts to believe that for once he’ll be spared of the usual bleak spread. “What’s it look like?” he asks after his father has begin dabbing at the canvas with paint. “All muddy again?”_

_“Muddy?!”_

_“Yeah, all dark.”_

_Though his lips struggle against a grin, the rest of his expression is affected with deep hurt. “Everyone’s a critic.”_

_“Come on. I’m serious.”_

_“Alright, fine. I’m about to get technical on you, so pay attention.”_

_Nobuchika sits up straighter. Technical explanations interest him; he likes know the why and the how, piecing it together until it takes its place in his understanding. He imagines this satisfaction and drive make him suited for detective work. “I’m paying attention.”_

_“So, look. When you make a picture and everything’s all light, your eye doesn’t know where to go. But if you make it so your subject’s the point of brightest light, your eye will go straight there. Right where you want it to. There’s no doubt what you’re trying to say if it’s all laid out in shadows and light.”_

_It doesn’t really make sense until his father shows him the complete picture a few hours later; in the painting Nobuchika hunches over his textbook, his features drawn in concentration. Even the blackest part of his hair is lighter than the shadows behind him, around him. There can be no question that this is what his father wanted the world to see, and it makes his stomach warm knowing that he is the cause of such love and pride._

_~_

To Ginoza’s dull surprise, Tsunemori made a habit of her visits. Every two days a nurse would come to his room and inform him that he had a visitor, and he’d stand and drag his IV cart behind him, the empty sleeve of his scrubs fluttering behind like a banner. He would carefully seat himself on the other side of the glass and listen to her emphatically optimistic chatter. He would study her features, each minute change in expression. He would look away when her eyes became bright.

At first their conversations were tentative, pointedly positive, as if she purged herself of every bit of sadness before she came to visit. That was what he noticed first, regardless; the deep sadness in her eyes, like an open wound in the endless white of the isolation facility. He couldn’t stop himself from staring, fixating on it, desperate. In the world before, he would have known what to do; he would have noticed it almost immediately. He fixated on it, then, as an act of contrition.

It occurred to him early on that she was hurting too, that she had been left, and unlike him, she hadn’t had the benefit of knowing it would happen. This curiosity replaced the earlier hesitance of their conversations; slowly, the instinct to know, the driving force of _how_ and _why_ resurrected him.

He made himself ask on her fourth visit. “Why are you here, Tsunemori?”

She said nothing at first. Her fingers twisted in her lap, tangled and anxious; he noticed a strip of dark red beside her thumbnail, where she had picked the skin away. “When I found you, at – at the plant, you looked at me …” she trailed off, glancing up at him, and her expression nearly pinned him to his seat with its pleading intensity. He couldn’t reconcile such naked regard. “You looked at me like you were alone in the world.”

He stared, stunned. He’d wanted to know, but for some reason he hadn’t expected that she would just say it, without qualification or preamble, that her comfort with the truth surpassed his desire to know. As he watched her face tip back down to her lap, he slowly realized that her words were as much a confession as assessment. He remembered her eyes, red raw, swollen from crying, and knew that they shared this. Whatever it was.

“You aren’t,” she told him after a long moment. “By the way.”

That evening, he forced himself to eat every bite of dinner, though tears streaked down his cheeks and the sobs made it hard to swallow.  

~

_At first, his father is delighted that Nobuchika finds his occupation so aspirational, and can’t resist indulging his curiosity. He quickly learns that the older he grows, the more his father feels comfortable in sharing, and this suits him fine. He would tag along to the precinct if it was allowed, and on slow school days, he daydreams of doing just that, of finding some integral scrap of evidence that escaped the investigators, the adults, with heads too far in the case to see every inch of it._

_He reads mysteries and crime procedurals, and tries to solve them before the protagonist. He reads every scrap he can get his hands on, to the increasing dismay of his mother. “You need to be careful,” she’s prone to warning them both, but her warnings might as well be inaudible for all the effect they have._

_He remembers them much later, when everything has changed. When his father’s delight is replaced by distance, remote eyes staring to someplace Nobuchika can’t see. You need to be careful, he was told, he knew in the core of his bones, and still he carried on as if nothing could touch him._

_~_

It wasn’t a marked change, his decision to live. It wasn’t even really a decision.

It was slow, and awkward; befitting his unbalanced body, the slanted, slouching walk that characterized him now. First he remembered Tsunemori, the confession embedded within observation, their mutual hurt. He remembered that she was all alone in the world, just as he was, and a fire lit in him. He ate, forcing himself to swallow each ashy bite, even when his stomach spasmed against the weight of food. He lay back, carefully folding his empty sleeve over his stomach, and let it sustain him.

He combed his hair. He bathed. He arranged his scrubs so they hung properly on his bony frame, and forced himself to see how thin he’d become, how starkly his hips and ribs protruded, sheathed by bone pale, blue-veined skin. How would he react, seeing what Ginoza had made of his sacrifice? Starving and weak, threaded with such acute self-hatred that he could hardly bring himself to breathe. Ruined by guilt and regret. What would his father say to that?

What should he have said in return? I’m sorry. I love you. I’m angry and I love you. You left us and I love you. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

I miss you.

~

_He doesn’t understand that day until much later, when years of distance and perspective cast its light. There had been drones. Flashing blue and red light. Some of the neighbors had come outside to watch. His mother had clutched Nobuchika’s jacket and sobbed garbled pleas, but his father had said nothing. He turned his back on his family and stepped into the paddy wagon, and he did so without speaking a single word._

_It’s much later when Nobuchika remembers that his eyes had been bright before he turned, before he left. His shoulders had trembled. His hands clenched so badly that when they slackened, four little crescents marked his palm._

_~_

This time, when Tsunemori saw him, her smile reached her eyes. “You’re looking better.”

He lowered himself into the opposite chair. “I’m feeling better.” It wasn’t all of the truth, didn’t even begin to capture the snarled mess of guilt and regret clanking around in his gut, but it was close enough to serve, for once. He _felt_ , and that alone made it true. After weeks of nothing, he felt.

Her smile widened. “Your doctors tell me that you’re ready for your prosthetic.” 

He gave his shoulder an experimental roll, wincing only slightly as the scar tissue stretched and gave, accommodating the motion. There was a touch of irony to his reality, now: The same arm, the same eyes. The same path. He could accept it, walk it as he was meant to. He could grow accustomed to work, for at the very least, there would always be criminals and detectives. To him, there would always be Akane, who had seen him at his worst and remained at his side, who made certain he knew he wasn’t alone while he languished in an isolation facility. Who wouldn’t be alone as long as he was there to watch her back.

 “I think I am,” he said at last.

“Have you thought about … well, you always have a place at work, Ginoza-san. You know that, right? I would – I would …”

“There’s nothing to think about,” he told her with a little of his old temerity. “Of course I’ll be returning to work.”

Of course he was. He was Ginoza Nobuchika, his father’s son. Idleness did not suit either of them.

 “I saved his things, Ginoza-san,” she told him much later, before she left for the day. “I saved them for you. They’ll be waiting in your new quarters.”

Before, this would have hurt him. He would have hunched on himself and pulled away. But now he carefully folded his loose sleeve in his lap and smiled; a complicated smile, one that contained his sadness and relief, guilt and regret. His love. He was alive, his life a gift given twice over, and he would be all right. “Thank you.”

~

The night before his surgery and three nights before his discharge, he had a dream about his father.

Not the way he’d been at the end, blood-streaked and broken, but the way he’d been before. His easy smile. Hands that could paint and repair, that could cook breakfast so good even the most hard-hearted would cry, that could shoot a gun and wipe tears from dirty cheeks. Their secrets and schemes. Clues in his father’s handwriting, scattered around their home. The pride that had both ruined and saved him. The way he looked sleeping in his favorite chair, head tipped back, dead to the world.

He dreamed about their arguments, and the long years he’d spent clinging to his hurt. He dreamed of the place that hurt took in his life, pain in the shape of his father, in the shape of being left behind. He dreamed of his mother flinching at his eyes, the resemblance that grew with each passing day, the taunts of the schoolyard, and still, through it all, that thwarted regard that he couldn’t excise, no matter how dearly he wished it.

He dreamed of his father’s place, and how perfectly suited he was toward filling it. How this would be the mark of his devotion, indicative of his forgiveness, and his need to be forgiven in return.

They stood together in this dream, shoulder to shoulder. “You’re my son,” his father said, and he knew that he was.


End file.
